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This time I went to Hong Kong to see what the city has to offer a hungry traveller

The last time I was in Hong Kong it was with a crew from the Discovery Travel and Living channel.

I stayed at the Peninsula, shot at the spa at the Langham Place, wandered around the Ladies’ Market, ate Michelin three star Chinese food washed down with rice wine at

the Four Seasons and found a little dim sum shop with superlative food.

 

   Some of these experiences (the Peninsula, the spa etc.) have already been telecast and the rest will be in the next season of Asian Diary early next year.

 

   But this time I am in Hong Kong without a crew, and eager to see what the city has to offer a hungry traveller with no TV commitments.

 

   My Cathay flight from Bombay is comfortable enough though each time I pass through Bombay airport I wonder why they don’t do anything about the excessively long queues at security.

 

   It is not that the CISF officers are inefficient – they are friendly and do their best – but simply that nobody can be bothered to post enough personnel at the airport. X-Ray machines lie unmanned, passenger-checking booths are empty and the lines snake all across the airport.

 

   I agree with travellers from Bombay who say that this would never be allowed at Delhi airport. Some big shot in the Home Ministry would note that the CISF had not posted enough people at the airport and the situation would be rectified immediately. But in Bombay, nobody of consequence seems to care.

 

   I am spending one night at the Sheraton Hong Kong, a bizarrely appropriate choice because when I first came here, fresh out of school in 1976, it was one of the city’s newest hotels and the place where I stayed.

 

   The Sheraton is huge (840 rooms and suites) and is a business hotel run with a certain brisk efficiency. It has a great location, at the edge of Nathan Road in Kowloon and shares the Peninsula’s spectacular view of Hong Kong island across the bay.

 

   For dinner, I go to Jade Garden, a short walk away near the Star ferry pier. It’s a large bustling Chinese restaurant full of families. The food is okay though hardly memorable but I like the Chinese barbecue (goose, pork etc.).

 

Day Two

 

I move from Kowloon to Hong Kong island and to the Mandarin. This is the traditional rival to the Peninsula; younger (it opened in 1963 while the Pen opened 40 years before that) but much more the establishment hotel for well-heeled businessmen in Hong Kong.

 

   In 1973, its owners bought a share of Bangkok’s The Oriental and the Mandarin Oriental chain was created. (Theoretically, the Hong Kong and Bangkok properties are both now called the Mandarin Oriental but just as everybody in Bangkok still says ‘Oriental’, so this property is just ‘The Mandarin’.)

 

   The Mandarin is the flagship of one of the world’s great luxury chains, so a few years ago, they closed the hotel down for several months and completely redid all the interiors except for the lobby and the mezzanine floor. As with all successful renovations, you don’t feel that you are in a modern hotel at all: the charm of old Hong Kong pervades all the rooms. But of course, there’s every modern convenience you can think of. The rooms are large, artistic and elegant and brilliantly lit.

 

   I’ve been looking for remnants of a vanishing Hong Kong so I end up at Luk Yu Tea House on Stanley Street.

 

   It is, I guess, Hong Kong’s version of what we could call an Irani restaurant in Bombay. It is full of regulars who drink tea, discuss business and either order from the short menu of main courses or stick to that traditional tea house staple of dim sum.

 

   It is full of atmosphere, slow, slightly confused service and ancient waiters who have probably been there since the restaurant began. That said, the dim sum are rubbish. I look around and notice that the only people ordering these very over-doughy dumplings are tourists with guide books. The locals order main courses.

 

   So, full marks for ambience. But don’t ever go there for the food.

 

   By dinner time, I have resolved to go back across the bay to Kowloon and to Tim Ho Wan. A few months ago, when we were shooting for Discovery, we ended up at this little, recently-opened hole-in-the-wall where a young chef made the best barbecued pork buns I have ever tried and brilliant cheung fan. Though we had only gone to eat, not to shoot, my producer Robin Roy and I were so fascinated by the chef’s dexterity that we decided to pull out the cameras and film anyway. (It is in the second season of Asian Diary, part of the episode on rice.)

 

   The problem with going to Tim Ho Wan is that it is a small dive, with no English signboard and sits quietly on a small street in the busy Mong Kok area of Kowloon, one street away from the Ladies’ Market.

 

   Fortunately, my Hong Kong Tourism guide Wing who had originally taken us to the restaurant, knows where it is and so, after a little difficulty I find it.

 

   I have not reckoned on the queue or the rain however. As scores of hungry Hong Kong residents crowd the street outside the dim sum shop, it begins to pour. As Tim Ho Wan can only seat about 25 people at one go, I begin to despair of finding a table.

 

   Fortunately, the chef sees me and this triggers some memories of the Discovery shoot (there can’t be too many Indians who have been there). He is unusually gracious and while the Chinese who are waiting in the rain give me unfriendly looks, I do the usual, graceless Indian thing of jumping the queue.

 

   The food is to die for. The barbecue pork buns (ordered by every single table) are as I remember them. There are cheung fan so light that parallels with angel wings spring to mind. The dumplings filled with prawn, chives and other delicate fillings glow with a translucent skin.

 

   On my way out (two people can eat like pigs at Tim Ho Wan for less than the equivalent of Rs 500!), I wonder if there are loads of undiscovered gems like this one on the streets of Hong Kong or whether I just got lucky.

 

Day Three

 

Lunch at Pierre with the bright and witty Katherine Anthony, the Mandarin’s Director of PR. Pierre is the Hong Kong outpost of the French chef (three Michelin stars in Paris), Pierre Gagnaire. I have eaten Gagnaire’s food before – most recently at Sketch in London – and in many ways, I prefer his style to those of his well-travelled three star French compatriots: Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon.

 

   Gagnaire’s style is both slightly wittier and, at the same time, more lyrical than many self-consciously serious French chefs, and his food always has the capacity to surprise.

 

   Gagnaire takes Pierre seriously, turning up in Hong Kong four times a year to recast the menu and the chef he has installed has an interesting background of his own, growing up in Alsace, cooking at Burgundy’s best restaurants and then arriving in Hong Kong via the Cote d’Azur.

 

   The food is excellent: a scallop starter and a sea-bass main course for me while Katherine has a slowcooked egg and then a monkfish tail. (It was a very large fish judging by the size of the tail.) The chef sends out extra dishes we can hardly manage: vegetable puree with parmesan and white truffle and two different desserts.

 

   Katherine tells me that Pierre has a Michelin star. So does the hotel’s grill room (run by its own chef, not by a celebrity-chef) but sadly, the Chinese restaurant, which is something of an institution in Hong Kong, has been overlooked by the Michelin inspectors.

 

   I ask her to recommend Michelin-starred restaurants in Hong Kong. “Well,” she says. “You could go to the world’s cheapest Michelin starred restaurant. It got a star even though it had not been open for a full year before the guide came out. It is a little dim sum shop in Kowloon. You can’t book and there is always a queue. But the food is great.”

 

"As I enjoy my chicken biryani and Australian wine on Cathay on the way back, I decide that I must now spread my wings. Either Macau or Shanghai will be next."

   “Ah yes,” I respond. “I know one such place. It’s funny, isn’t it, how some of the best places are these little holes in the wall?”

 

   “The chef at this place,” she continues, “used to be a dim sum chef at the Four Seasons and then he upped and left and opened his own place.”

 

   “Oh really?” It is my turn to be surprised. “You know, I went for dinner last night to Tim Ho Wan, which is this little dim sum place in Mong Kok which we went to when I was here with a TV crew and I was surprised to see that the dim sum chef there had also worked for the Four Seasons.”

 

   “Tim Ho Wan?” Katherine is frowning slightly, now. “I think it is the place, actually.”

 

   Can this be true? Can my little Tim Ho Wan have actually won a Michelin star? Surely not? It is hardly a Michelin-type place. Besides, the chef seemed so humble, so unaffected.

 

   As soon as lunch is over, I rush to a bookshop and buy the Tatler Guide to Hong Kong restaurants. This is roughly as reliable as Tatler’s Guides to Singapore and Bangkok restaurants (ie: useful for the phone numbers not the reviews) and no, Tim Ho Wan does not feature.

 

   But when I open The Michelin Guide I am startled to see that not only does Tim Ho Wan feature, it even has a star!

 

   “In March 09,” writes Michelin, “two chefs joined hands and opened here. It has been a success ever since, hence the queue outside… special mention can be given to the steamed dumpling Chiu Chow style; the steamed egg cake and most definitely, the baked bun with barbecued pork. The wait is worth it.”

 

   I am gobsmacked.

 

   I look through the rest of The Michelin Guide. Unlike other guides to Asia (The Miele Guide, for instance), this is written by people who know their stuff even if you disagree with their conclusions. Unlike other Michelin Guides, there is no needless reverence towards French restaurants and they’ve really tried to do a fair ranking of Chinese restaurants.

 

   You could of course be cynical and say that the Guide is a long, lingering, wet kiss to the Four Seasons. There are only two three star restaurants in Hong Kong and both are at the Four Seasons! In the hotel section, The Four Seasons gets the top ranking (followed by the Mandarin and then the Peninsula). And even the hotel’s coffee shop is deemed worthy of a Michelin listing.

 

   Greedily, I look up the places I have been to. There are many branches of Jade Garden but not the one I went to. (That turns up in the Tatler Guide: “the perfect ambience to absorb a Hong Kong gastronomical tradition.”) Luk You Tea House is over-praised: “the dim sum here are excellent and affordable.” And Pierre gets a star but being Michelin, too much is made of the fact that the products are imported from France.

 

   Dinner is Peking Duck. I go to one of the many branches of Peking Garden (like Jade Garden, part of the huge Maxim’s restaurant empire). The duck is terrific without being a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I have a whole chicken fried with garlic while the duck is roasting.

 

Day Four

 

Lunch at the Langham Hotel in Kowloon with Katie Haran, the English PR for the hotel who has come to Hong Kong via the Lanesborough and the Dorchester in London.

 

   The Langham is probably the world’s newest chain of luxury hotels. I have some memories of the Langham, a wonderful hotel at the top of Regent Street in London, though when I stayed there in the 1990s, the hotel was run by Hilton. Now, Langham is a Chinese-owned chain with two brands. Langham hotels tend to be classic-luxury properties with a sense of place while a second brand Langham Place is used for modern, five star hotels.

 

   Both properties in Hong Kong are on the Kowloon side (I shot the spa in Langham Place) and both are famous for their Chinese food. Ming Court at Langham Place has two Michelin stars but we eat at T’ang Court at the Langham which also has two stars.

 

   We stick to dim sum but Katie orders some fried dumplings which I would normally avoid. To my relief, the deep frying is excellent and the lunch is a success enlivened by Katie’s stories of life in London hotels.

 

   Everybody has told me that I must go to Yung Kee and eat the goose. I look it up in Michelin: “This can best be described  as an institution as it seats over a 1,000 people at meal times… There is an army of waiters scurrying up and down four packed floors delivering a selection of largely Cantonese dishes involving much roasted goose and barbecued pork.” And it has a Michelin star.

 

   So I go to Yung Kee, order the goose, the pork (the suckling pig to be precise) and a roast chicken marinated in dark soya sauce.

 

   The restaurant is a madhouse – as you would expect, given its size. But the food lives up to its billing. The goose is fine and the chicken is good but the standout dish is the suckling pig, soft on the inside and crisp on the outside.

 

Day Five

 

I have now discovered the Mandarin bakery. So I decide that if I skip lunch I can have one of the sinful quiches that the bakery does so well. This is delicious and filling enough to keep me going till an early dinner (6.30 pm).

 

   I am meeting Albert Wen, the noted publisher of travel books, for dinner and have asked Albert to take me somewhere I would not go otherwise.

 

   Albert finds a restaurant on Hollywood Road but even after he gives me detailed directions, I am unable to guide my cab-driver there. When we finally find it (largely because Albert stands on Hollywood Road and peers into approaching cabs) I feel better.

 

   It is not even a proper restaurant. There is no signboard and it is located in a basement. Albert has told me before about pop-up restaurants that are all the rage in Hong Kong. A chef takes over a flat, runs an unofficial restaurant for a month or so with no registration, no advertising and entry restricted to a tiny circle and then disappears again only to pop up somewhere else.

 

   This is not a pop-up restaurant but it is certainly obscure. It has no English name (there is a Chinese name, apparently), it is run by a family, there is no menu – you eat whatever the chef has cooked – and it never advertises.

 

   The food is from Sichuan which means it is hot though we are told that the chef tries to alternate spicy and non-spicy dishes. And there’s a lot to alternate with: the meal consists of eleven large courses, ranging from unshelled prawns to chicken to boiled beef to dumplings to tofu to sweet potato to pickled cucumber to God alone knows what else.

 

   Then, as the service is winding down, the couple who run it go from table to table. “This is my wife,” the man says. “She is the chef.” He pauses while we applaud. “And now she will sing.”

 

   And so the restaurant hushes into silence as this Chinese lady sings a folk song in her soprano voice.

 

   Later, we applaud again and she disappears back into the kitchen.

 

Day Six

 

My last lunch in Hong Kong. I decide to see if Katherine is right  and venture up to Man Wah, the Mandarin’s Chinese restaurant.

 

   I gather that the recent renovations have left Man Wah largely untouched or, better still, it has been restored rather than renovated. It is a beautifully atmospheric restaurant with a wooden ceiling and brass lanterns.

 

   Service is gracious and the dim sum are very good: pork cheung fan, shrimp siu mai, dumplings of garoupa asparagus and black truffle (a waste of truffle, frankly) and an interesting lobster puff that tastes as though somebody has tried to make a Lobster Thermidor dim sum. There’s an eggier-than-normal egg tart to follow and I can’t quite work out why the place does not have a Michelin star judging by the standards of the competition.

 

   Finally, it is time to go home. As I enjoy my chicken biryani (very nice but like no biryani I know of) and Australian wine on Cathay on the way back, I decide that I must now spread my wings. Either Macau or Shanghai will be next.

 

CommentsComments

  • Abhiranjan Singh 19 Jan 2010

    Dear Vir, huge fan of yours and a foodie as well!

    Have you tried Gordon Ramsay's restaurants? What do you think?

  • Shankar A.P. 22 Dec 2009

    Dear Vir, I am huge fan of your food adventures around the world. Didn't you have HK's famous egg tarts? Any recommendations about where to go for good egg tarts?

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